Theopolis in the Court of the High King (Extremely Rough Version)

THEOPOLIS IN THE COURT OF THE HIGH KING

I was in for a good lay
By way of Matilda
And the forest, the thought of
Bumping about in whatnot bushes and ferns
The only thing that “does it,”
it being a long time since I’d done
anything.

But them woods did not put out
them flames, and them twenty minutes spent
fruitless searching for my lazy eyeful
garbled me, and all was not good.

I was mistaken, then,
Bamboozling my way
Keenly past said honeypots,
Your wells and thickets
Drolled up to look like
Wells and thickets.

Staying was
Unexpected. I sucked on
Zero pomegranates, planned no
magpie assimilation
Slowly or with a rapid hup-hup
and jump to it, did not conjecture
nothing.

It was whimsy what beat me
no dreams of hunting, but
horny hurt and
bored among woodland creatures
I was content to plod after
some shiftless doe
albinism struck
not particularly fast.

And when your dogs found me
Luckless facedown in the lake
I was brought here, as if my criminal hands had crinkled
Bones and crunkled rim wits to the edge. I admit, I walked
Them three miles, and I tempted that deer
a handful of seed
some slow creeping steps
and if she had come close I would have
maybe bashed this or shamed her ups
the head, pluct sinew from teeth and been a general terror
for the sake of a sad man, or anything comes up, but there was
no waiting or walking, I watch that hind split and rise, it goes by.

these days I walk through the forest and I am the absence
of anything the forest wants, I am set with jewels
in the shape of my teeth
and hands legs offset anything hair and twitchy smile
a line of hairs that surprise and disappoint
warning Noli me tangere to a universe
which learns Latin
just for this.

Harold is Made of Balloons

Harold is made of balloons
completely, while answering phones
at Best Buy, watching Eddie Murphy in
The Haunted Mansion he fills himself with static
and touches himself, feels tethered
to the pole he is tied to
and also his life, which he is told he will go home to
though at home there is a carton of ice cream
and Seinfeld, and the books did not tell him
this was life. It was :Fireman, Policeman,
Astronaut. Or going home to something
different, he is pretty sure there is a small blue
eyed boy involved, though Harold doesn’t like boys,
who try to pop him or let him go into the sky
until he disappears against the blue
or black if it’s night
though often Harold thinks that he should let himself go
against the blue (he is afraid of the black).
There is also a pretty girl who is not blond
who opens the door and offers him pasta in a glass dish,
though Harold is modern and would not mind offering her pasta
in anything, and she tells him (he is sure) that he is
Doing The Right Thing
going to Best Buy the next morning and learning
not to hate Eddie Murphy while rubbing himself
against his own hair, and he believes her because
she fills him up fresh every night
and pulls him under the covers so he doesn’t float away into the
Terrifying Black suspended above him, though sometimes he wonders
If you fall up long enough do you turn into a star?
The books told him that stars take a million plus years to reach here
and most of them died a million plus years ago
and while this sounds less foreign to Harold, who thought
he would be a star for years and years, and
dead for millions of years seems within his grasp,
he is happier under the covers
of the books that told him everything, and though he makes his own book
which is very small and filled with promises to write a big book about the
Truth and Best Buy and The Haunted Mansion, he would not
tether himself to it, he thinks
he might not tether himself to anything.

Fragment

no philosophy stills the setting sun
and though what graceful pauses come
and lengthen moments later lost
horizons swallow all celestial.

Love Poem #4

the infinite distance
between us
is the same infinite distance
between the two most distant mirrors
in two mirrors
facing eachother.

Love Poem #3

YOUR BODY

your body is everything
you say it it– broken
into, boring
through hours like a
larval wasp
through the belly of a caterpillar incubator

when you unworm, pinch
the loving meniscus of
them years
until it tears

you will be beautiful, measured
in grains of sand and hurricanes
cause. you will be a
fantastic contraption

slowly the years

slowly the years
you unfold
an oragami anything
yourself
to me

now spread plain
with creases